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Concept
Spectrum (functional analysis)
Summary
In mathematics, particularly in functional analysis, the spectrum of a bounded linear operator (or, more generally, an unbounded linear operator) is a generalisation of the set of eigenvalues of a matrix. Specifically, a complex number is said to be in the spectrum of a bounded linear operator if
either has no set-theoretic inverse;
or the set-theoretic inverse is either unbounded or defined on a non-dense subset.
Here, is the identity operator.
By the closed graph theorem, is in the spectrum if and only if the bounded operator is non-bijective on .
The study of spectra and related properties is known as spectral theory, which has numerous applications, most notably the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.
The spectrum of an operator on a finite-dimensional vector space is precisely the set of eigenvalues. However an operator on an infinite-dimensional space may have additional elements in its spectrum, and may have no eigenvalues. For example, consider the right shift operator R on the Hilbert space l2,
This has no eigenvalues, since if Rx=λx then by expanding this expression we see that x1=0, x2=0, etc. On the other hand, 0 is in the spectrum because although the operator R − 0 (i.e. R itself) is invertible, the inverse is defined on a set which is not dense in l2. In fact every bounded linear operator on a complex Banach space must have a non-empty spectrum.
The notion of spectrum extends to unbounded (i.e. not necessarily bounded) operators. A complex number λ is said to be in the spectrum of an unbounded operator defined on domain if there is no bounded inverse defined on the whole of If T is closed (which includes the case when T is bounded), boundedness of follows automatically from its existence.
The space of bounded linear operators B(X) on a Banach space X is an example of a unital Banach algebra. Since the definition of the spectrum does not mention any properties of B(X) except those that any such algebra has, the notion of a spectrum may be generalised to this context by using the same definition verbatim.
Official source
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